All self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously. ~ Tom Robbins
I pity myself too much. This was the revelation I reached recently on my trip abroad, a trip I had the privilege to spend a lot of the time in quiet, meditative solitude.
Of all human emotions, perhaps the most useless and destructive is self-pity.
For me it was very hard – and quite frankly embarrassing – to realize that I’m a self-pitying person in regards to my chronic health problems. But the realization, although serving as a bitter slap in the face, has actually helped me to embrace life with a more open-minded, all-accepting attitude.
Let whatever comes come. Don’t fight, don’t struggle needlessly, and most of all, don’t mope for god’s sake.
Think You’re Not? Well … You Probably Are.
Find it hard to accept a situation or circumstance in your life? Mull and muse over your problems constantly? Feel gloomy and depressed because of what life has dealt you? Feel like a victim? Have an inexplicable craving for the sympathy and condolences of others? Yes, chances are that you’re a self-pitying person.
Self-pity is basically exaggerated and self-indulgent pity over ones own life, position or circumstance. Most of us experience self-pity throughout our lifetimes, and although it can serve to be a self-soothing mechanism that assists us in later accepting or changing our circumstances, many times we make a nasty habit of it.
And when self-pity is made a habit of, it not only impedes the progress we make in life, but it creates self-destructive cycles of self-sabotage. Sol wrote an article on the psychology of why misery can make you happy, which you may like to check out later.
11 Signs That You Chronically Self-Pity
Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world. ~ Helen Keller
So, are you a self-pitying person … or rather, how much of a self-pitying person are you? Find out below.
#1 You find it hard to laugh at life and at yourself.
Taking yourself too seriously, and finding it difficult to laugh at your predicaments and defeats is a tell-tale sign of self-pity. Beware.
#2 You tend to crave for drama.
In truth, you’re a little bit of a Drama Queen and tend to have a melodramatic streak to you. Usually this stems from extremist types of thinking (e.g. black-and-white, all-or-nothing mindsets).
#3 You tend to crave for sympathy.
Self-pity is so addictive because it gives us the momentary pleasure of being supported, cared for and emotionally pampered. This is a dangerous, highly maladaptive way of developing emotional bonds and connections with other people.
#4 You tend to be an individualist.
Self-pity is one of the most effective ways of keeping yourself separate and independent from the friends, family and people around you.
#5 You tend to be a past-orientated person.
Some people live in the present, others in the future, and still others in the past. Self-pity is inextricably linked to past-focused mindsets that dwell on past events.
#6 You have low self-esteem.
People with low self-esteem tend to crave the acceptance and affection of other people as a way of feeling better about themselves. The mask of self-pity that constantly promotes its tragic-life-story campaign is an excellent way of collecting flocks of unsuspecting supporters.
#7 You have a melancholic temperament.
I’ve written about the melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic temperaments before. The melancholic temperament in particular is given to bouts of brooding and deep introspection, which can serve as a perfect breeding ground for self-pity.
#8 Deep down, you don’t believe you’re worthy of love.
This stems from low self-esteem and creates a cycle of self-destructive behaviour. Self-pity is one of the greatest tools for the self-destructive person. It creates self-fulfilling prophecies, and alienates all the people you love and admire from you.
#9 You have an unhealthy habit of being self-absorbed.
Quite simply, the more self-absorbed you are, the more likely you are to fall into the trap of self-pity.
#10 You have a strong fighting instinct.
This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you choose to use it for. When used in a negative sense, the fighting instinct is used to battle against life, to fight against the tide, and to fight against accepting reality.
#11 You subconsciously feel guilty.
Often times self-pity is an unconscious way of avoiding taking responsibility for personal actions or decisions made in the past. When we find it too difficult to accept the wrong that we’ve committed, sometimes we tend to hide from it by making ourselves the victims, rather than other people. In this case, self-pity is the perfect cowardly self-defense mechanism.
***
Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug. ~ Og Mandino
Feeling sorry for yourself is normal, and in some instance can serve as a natural stepping stone to developing acceptance of the difficulties and failures in your life. However, many of us make a habit out of self-pity, either to avoid taking personal responsibility, to avoid taking action, or simply to gain sickly and unhealthy forms of affection and attention from other people.
So next time someone asks you whether you want the waambulance, smile and say “yes please”. It may help you to snap out of the poisonous and addictive drug of self-pity.
This article is flip and insensitive. I find it appalling as it’s confusing signs of genuine depression with self pity. Very damaging to the depressed.
How to deal with gender dysphoria? I can’t see myself as male, I want to be a girl. This creates huge depression and I don’t know how to deal with it at all… I just don’t see a point in doing anything. And I hate myself because I can’t be a girl
I want to kill myself sometimes. mostly it’s self pity
My wife often tells me that I am in a self pity mode and I constantly live in the state of denial. I really have to talk to someone to be able to express myself and then, if I am in that list of people with self pity- i will accept it. Is there a way to reach you?
It’s a good article but I’m wondering what about in cases where someone has suffered ongoing abuse and trauma in their developing years (and therefore developed PTSD or similar). They can have undergone intensive therapy, practice mindfulness and meditation regularly and attempt to live a conscious life and still experience depression and highly negative thoughts. I just want to say to trauma survivors that healing for some of us is not a one-time thing as much as I’d love for it to be like that. I actually had a spiritual awakening and thought wow, all my problems are gone! I’ve had to learn the hard way that it doesn’t work like that and that you do need to acknowledge the abuse and trauma you went through and yes, mourn the life you never got to live before you can actually let it go. This could be a life-long thing, I don’t know. I’m just going through it and thought I’d share with others who might be beating themselves up more after reading this article :) That’s not to say this article is incorrect or unhelpful! I’m just saying, healing requires patience and presence.
What’s written here can be very unhelpful to a person experiencing depression. Are you a trained therapist?
qfe
I agree. She’s describing depression not self pity. It’s quite horrible what she wrote.
I have a friend who’s trying to drag me into their pity party, but I don’t like pity, I like solutions and I’m not good at comforting. He’s getting hard to be around because of it. I’m not sure how to help without hurting. Any suggestions?
Well, if he’s getting unbearable, I’d clear out. No excuses, no apologies.
i became addicted to self soothing as a child in a turbulent and often neglectful household. thing is, imy self soothing was actually self pity. i remember the moment as a toddler making up a song about how daddy doesn’t love me. I remember keeping the lyrics in my head for fear of punishment. I remember staring up at my screaming parents and thinking they were so massive, they could just smash me. I sat on the floor staring up at them playing my pity party song on my little xylophone and it somehow being comforting. I imagined what people might say to me if they knew.
now im in my thirties and im still stuck. my marriage is dying and i just want to die. im still that child with bad coping mechanisms and im stuck. i want to change, but i always come back to this.
I too confuse self-pity with self-compassiin at times. One thing that works for me sometimes is to give compassion to the self-pitying part instead of condemning it like ‘Baaad pity! Baaad pity!’. It served us well earlier in life abd it wants to be loved, too, even if it isnt ghe solutiin for today. Love seems lije a general good tool for letting go of stubborn habits and beluefs. ‘Thank you, self-pity, for meaning well and serving me for do long, but maybe it is time to grow into something more wholesome.’ :)
I needed this. Thank you ever so much, I’m at a stagnant point in my life where I have no friends to share times with so I have found myself becoming self absorbed and overall a shadow of my former self.
It seems I have work to do on me to get to a better level!
I mean yea I am very insecure..but I don’t bother anyone with my issues. Why is it self pity to just wanna be alone and cry. To let it out. I do the fake it till you make it. I’m a very lively person to many people, or quiet. I sit there in the middle of the night, and pretend I’m talking to someone to feel somehow relieved. What is self pity. I don’t understand it.
Wow, you just described someone I know! She enjoys playing the victim role when in actuality she’s the perpetrator of all dramatic situations. Everything you said was right on. Very interesting. Thank you!
I’m glad you could make this discovery Pia. We all have some kind of self-pitying “victim” in our lives, but what we fail to realize is that often we self-pity and victimize ourselves in very subtle ways as well. What we perceive in others is usually a reflection of what we have in ourselves.
Guilty as charged.. Thank you for the absolutely blog
Most of us are, but it is excellent that you have the guts to admit it Bruce. That is a lot more than what many of us do. Thank you for reading!
-Luna
Guilty! Now what?
Scott, I recently wrote about overcoming self-pity here: https://lonerwolf.com/overcoming-self-pity/
I hope that this article helps!
-L
Guilty as charged. Ahha moment. I’ve been sabotaging myself all these years. Duh!!!!!
Well done Dawn! I’m delighted to see that this article could give you that ‘aha’ moment, and boost your level of self-awareness just that little bit more.
Many thanks for reading!
-Luna
Nice to recognize the signs of “self-inflicted victim” and then what …… would be nice to read suggestions on how to get out of the self pitying or solutions. Stepping stones to be a better self would bring on more hope. :)
A good point Brenda. Self-pity can be dealt with in a number of ways: self-awareness meditation, the practice of mindfulness, NLP, self-hypnosis. These are all parts of the process of Involution, an inner journey of transformation we take to better ourselves and our lives. Reading about it may assist you more: https://lonerwolf.com/7-stages-of-involution/
Feel free to let me know how you go.
Warmly,
-Luna
Thank you for that synchronistically timed post. My friend’s having a bit of trouble and I don’t know what to do about it, not because I don’t understand what he’s going through, but because, I can’t point my finger on the right words. Thank you for the post, all I have to do now is get my friend to read it.
Silver_Moon, my pleasure.
It’s very difficult and uncomfortable for us to admit our faults, especially in regards to self-pity. I hope your friend finds this article a ray of hope, rather than another thing to be sad about (which the self-pitying cycle tends to create).
Many thanks for reading and commenting.
All the best,
-Luna
I can admit to some of those, but only about half of them. It seems to depend on what’s going on around me more than anything. I find my short attention span keeps me from getting too involved in self pity!
Chantel, I never thought having a short attention span would be such a good defense against self-pity! I guess that’s the benefit of the tech-age slowly transforming our brains to latch quickly onto the next stimulation that presents itself.
Thank you for reading!
-Luna
GUILTY as charged!
Tess … I think this calls for … a pity party!
haha, OK OK, that was a poor joke :)
Thank you for having a read, and nice to hear from you as always!
-Luna